


To Go With Grace

by Saveourskinship



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, EWE, F/M, Hermione Is A Ghost, Sexy Times, good but sad ending, non-canon compliant, reformed Draco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27550339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saveourskinship/pseuds/Saveourskinship
Summary: Hermione was killed in the Malfoy manor during her torture from Bellatrix Lestrange. Unfortunately, she became a ghost and tries to find a way to reach peace. Draco Malfoy does not help this process. Hurt, angst and heartbreak ensues.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57





	To Go With Grace

**Author's Note:**

> Based on 'my tears ricochet' by Taylor Swift from her album _folklore_.
> 
> This work is not for profit, just for fun. All copyrights belong to the original authors.
> 
> I stand with trans people and strongly disagree with the comments Ms. Rowling has made.

I watched my own funeral. I saw Harry and Ron weep over the small epitaph in the wall. The entire Weasley family and my friends, Neville, Luna, there were more but Hagrid was the loudest of all. The Order stood in rows behind those I was closest to, teachers and people from all over school including a lot of the D.A., the ones who had survived anyway. My body wasn’t there, that wasn’t able to be recovered. No, that had been incinerated by the very person who stood apart from everyone else, enduring their scowls and dark eyes. You who stood with grey skin, eyes unfocused, staring at the shrine you’d built. They blamed you for what happened and you know, I blame you, too. You and your whole rotten family. You’re the ones who killed me, after all.

This celebration of my death is actually a small room, it rests in the sun where the floor to ceiling windows stream in light. I guess you thought you knew me. There’s an armchair and _Hogwarts: A History_ sitting on the small table beside it. A small, almost altar is installed into one of the walls, books lining top to bottom surrounding it. ' _In Memory of Hermione Jean Granger, the Brightest Witch of Our Age_ '. You probably thought you were honoring my memory, but really, it just makes me furious. 

I died on my worst day, sprawled out, eyes glassy and without the intelligence that used to sparkle behind them, pathetic and bleeding from the curse carved into my flesh from the word ‘Mudblood’. The _Crucio_ ’s kept coming, until I couldn’t scream anymore. All I could do, head lolling to the side was stare at you, blood trickling from my mouth where I had bitten my tongue. I was crying and you were blurry. I knew I was going, I tried to conjure a happy memory, I wanted to remember that time we first kissed. You were shocked I would do something like that. Your face twisted into hate, you still hated me then. But you kissed me back, ferociously, and my heart had raced. Your broken body from Harry’s _Sectumsempra_ hot under my fingers. 

That ended up just being the first time. You sought me out again and again, didn’t you. Our passion becoming more heated with each encounter until your parting words of “I hate you, Granger,” stopped being spat out. No, by the last time we saw each other before the summer that utterance was a caress, a reminder of what you used to feel, were supposed to feel. But you didn’t, I knew it meant the opposite.

I tried to find those moments as my life ended, really I did. My heart still squeezed to see you even through my terror. Maybe, just maybe, we’d find a way. But it didn’t happen, you saved Harry but I was too far gone. Slipping away on the flagstone of your family’s ballroom.

My death was angry and unfulfilling. I wasn’t done yet, I rejected the peace my body floated in, I came back. I don’t know how long it took, the manor was empty. Or maybe it wasn’t, I just couldn’t leave the ballroom. That one flagstone was slightly stained still, I had changed it forever. My muddy blood as your family so thought ingrained forever in your home.

At the start, I couldn’t figure out how time worked in my new form. It’s hard being a ghost ok? It took me a long time to anchor myself, and I still have no body as such. When I raise my hand, there’s just nothing there.

I have no idea how long it had been, it was the first time you had entered the ballroom, sometimes your house elves had come through, but no one else. The house elves couldn’t see me and neither could you. I tried though, I screamed, cried, beat your chest and cursed you. Nothing. All you could do was give your bloody interview to the _Daily Prophet_ announcing a charity you were forming, free medical care for those affected by the War. I saw Harry had endorsed it. Are you friends now? How could you both do this to me? I died because of him, Harry. I sobbed and existence left me again.

When I came back, you were gone and the ballroom was empty again. I practised becoming corporeal, or as corporeal as a ghost can get I guess. I could flicker amorphously now, but only for about a second. It was harder than any spell I’ve ever tried. 

Then you had that gods awful funeral for me. Possibly a memorial, it had been a long time by that point, six months maybe? You had the flagstone I died on pulled out and made into a cenotaph in the ostentatiousness you call my mausoleum. My favourite books lining the walls, my favourite armchair from Gryffindor placed near a small table. The portrait you had done can see me at least. It waves when my presence is there. I’m stronger now and am almost always around. I tried to console my friends, I sank before Ron and Harry begging them to see me, hear me, anything. And _you_ , you were still there, looking like you were dying. You know I heard you mutter it: ‘I hate you, Granger,” and yeah, I hate you, too. Torturing me even when I’m dead.

“Come back whenever you want,” you told Harry and Ron.

They had smiled at you wanly. Smiled! What the hell?! They said they probably wouldn’t because it was too painful. I was right there, yelling at all of you, crying so hard I thought it might kill me again. But of course it didn’t, try as I might, I can’t find that peace. Seems it was a one-time-only offer.

You stayed long after everyone left, staring at my portrait, not saying anything. I tired of screaming at you after a while, I stood beside you instead. “It’s over now, Hermione, please just leave me at peace,” you told the picture. Your face was screwed up in pain, you clutched at your chest like you wanted to wrench your heart out. Your other hand fisted upon the shelf near the cenotaph. I cradled what invisible form I had around that hand. I bent and in my mind I placed a kiss upon it, another tear leaking out, you’d never called me Hermione before. I stepped back then but you let out a strangled whimper. Turning back, I saw it. Glistening on your skin, my teardrop where it had broken upon you.

You looked to my portrait, but she just looked at you sadly and glanced behind you at me. You whirled around, but of course you couldn’t see me as I felt my small tether weakening and I was no longer there.

* * *

Graves are strange things, though graves made from the material where the memorialised died are especially strange. I doubt you would ever have guessed that I would be tied to the place I died. Maybe because my blood was still there, _Scourgify_ wasn’t enough to get rid of all of me.

I’ve spent months becoming a real form. I can manage it for about 30 seconds now. I’m stuck in this strange atrium you created for me. I’ve tried to turn the pages on _Hogwarts: A History_ but nothing happens. The only thing that staves off the boredom is trying to anchor myself further onto the mortal plane. 

You come every day, sometimes you have tea or coffee, sometimes you read, sometimes you fall asleep in the sun. I love you through all of it. I hate you, too. Sometimes the pages of your books flutter as I yell at you. Your eyes widen and yet you smile. You probably think I’m telling you to turn the page. I’m not. I’m screaming at you to destroy the stone so I can leave, I plead with you to hear me just once, I cradle your face as my heart breaks again and again.

* * *

Today you saw me. You were strolling in the gardens with a witch I don’t know. You were smiling at her. I hated that. A surge of anger coursed through as I stood at the windows. You stopped, staring. You looked right at me for the first time since I died. You ran right in, you searched for me but I hadn’t been able to hold it any longer.

You slumped in the armchair, breathing hard, hand clenched over your heart. You looked up at my portrait again. “Why are you still here, Granger?” you asked, beating your chest, hunched over in pain. Your witch waited in the garden like you must have told her to. She’s an obedient one, isn’t she?

You took a ring out of your pocket, it’s elegant and simple. That snobby witch on your arm would hate it. She wants a big rock, I can tell. 

“I was going to give this to her,” you said, nodding at the witch still standing on the path about 10 metres away. “But it’s always been yours.” You placed it on the shelf near the flagstone marker.

Are you trying to appease me? Trying to get me to leave you alone? I know that it’s a lie and it doesn’t help. My portrait thinks so too, she crosses her arms at you with a frown. 

“You still won’t talk to me?” you ask her. She just stares where I stand over your left shoulder. She won’t say anything until I give her something to relay, when I can. She’s a clever witch.

We both watch you despondently walk back to your date. My portrait’s lip is trembling, she’s too far away from any other portraits so she can’t visit anyone. She’s alone with only me and I’m hardly good company.

It does give me an idea though. Maybe I can just focus on my voice. I’ve been trying to do everything at once, have a form, be able to manipulate objects and be heard. Maybe if I focus on just one, I might be able to do better.

It takes another month, but I start talking to myself, and by that I mean my portrait. We don’t when you’re around though. I want to be clear when I finally gain enough power to speak on cue.

It happens on a day when it is raining. You were later than usual, the sky was so dark you needed to light candles. You still came though. 

My portrait nodded at me as you settled in the chair with your book. I knelt in front of you. I tried to be as gentle as I could, “Malfoy,” the word breathed into the room, I’ve never called you Draco, it would be weird to now. You looked panicked but I think you had known for a while I was around. That’s why you come to read, you think you are reading with me.

“Where are you?” you asked. 

“Please, just listen,” I said. Your head was jerking around the room, I haven’t been able to localise my voice yet. 

“Granger, there’s so much- can I… can I see you?” 

It broke my heart yet again to see you trying so hard with that much pain on your face. I couldn’t get distracted though, I only have a little bit of time. 

“Malfoy, you must take the stone marker and destroy it, please. I can’t live like this anymore.”

Your eyes widened, “You’re alive?” your voice cracked, tight with emotion.

My portrait saved me, “No, I’m not,” she said. “But I need you to kill me all the same.”

I faded away, having used everything I had at the time, my portrait trying to explain as you became more and more desperate. I cried at your anguish, maybe your ring hadn’t been a joke.

When I came back, I could tell I was in a hole, the broken pieces of the cenotaph around me. I sighed peacefully, it was coming. You stood above the hole. My portrait was here too, ragged canvas splitting my image. She glanced at me, “I don’t want to be here either,” she told me.

“Is she here?” you asked. Neither of us replied, you already knew the answer.

“Please Granger, I- I don’t want you to go,” your voice is quiet, broken. How selfish of you.

I summon as much as I can, drawing my knees up to my chest and I can see them. Judging from your choking gasp, you can, too.

I tilt my head up, a tear tracking down my face, it’s so quiet I hear the tiny plink as it hits the stone beneath me. You are frozen, eyes swimming. I have never seen you cry, not once. Not over me at least.

“Please, you must,” is all I can say. You nod, your hands quivering as you raise your wand. My heart clenches as I see the silver cufflinks I gave you with the Draco constellation engraved adorning your sleeves. I try to remember your small smile when I gave them to you, but again, I fall on feeling the anguish, the what-ifs our lives could have brought. Then the roar of fire, hot enough to melt stone. I watch as you sink to your knees beside the hole I am in, your despair crippling. I lower my head, my portrait sighs and closes her eyes, the flames licking until she is gone. It takes me longer, but I feel the pull. 

“I hate you, Granger.”

It doesn’t hurt of course. All I feel is oblivion.

* * *

I blink, well, not really, but you know what I mean. I thought I would be gone. Why aren’t I gone? I’m being pulled somewhere. I finally bring myself into awareness. I’m inside the manor now, my invisible form is being pulled alongside you. It must have been a long while, your grief seems to have passed. Oh, why am I here? I become inconsolably distraught, it throbs through me. You stop talking to your wretched father and turn to look beside you. Did you feel that you, utter bastard? What have you done to me?

I am too overwhelmed to figure it out, catatonic but I am bidden to follow you, my eyes unfocused as you swan around the manor, smiling at visitors, you take me into London and Diagon Alley. Why? It pounds into me again and again. What happened? And now my portrait’s gone and can’t help me anymore. You’re in bed when I notice it, before you extinguish the bedside candles, you have your arm snaked under the pillow holding your head, the black satin making you look even more pale than usual. Your hand sat resting on the other pillow, you’re wearing a gray stone ring. Please, please, please, no. My mind wakes up from its stupor. Malfoy, you complete and infinite idiot. You kept a piece of it! You made it into a gods forsaken ring! 

“Hey Granger, how are you today?” you smile, twisting the ring gently with your thumb. You bloody well talk to it? Why, Malfoy, why! I’m so upset I can feel my energy plummeting the temperature in the room. The bare skin of your shoulder prickles in goose pimples.

“I’m working more on my charity you know, Granger. I named it after you, I don’t think I’ve ever told you that.” Your voice is quiet as you talk to the ring. You aren’t awkward at all, this must be a regular occurrence for you. How long have I been gone? And now I’m here, and even worse, tied to you, forever.

You’re still talking, “I know you’re happy now but I hate this feeling, Granger. What about you? Are you at peace?” 

The rage that surges through me blows out, curdling black and dangerous, “NO!” The word reverberates through the room, the candles blowing out and the curtains billowing despite the windows being closed.

Terrified, you wrench upwards, eyes wide, breathing heavily as you look around the room. You stretch out your hand, the ring extending towards me, this close I can see the small markings of discolouration my blood made. I hate this so much, I want nothing more than to be able to take that hand but you’ve kept me here. Again! I sob, a heavy weight resting where my chest would be. My tether becomes ungrounded and I fall away.

I never know how long it takes for my consciousness to come back. Each time it could be different, or it could be the same. I wouldn’t know. I’m resigned to my fate though, I answer when you talk out loud to yourself, I give you my opinions on decisions you make, I comment on how handsome you look as you dress for the day. 

My capabilities came back quicker this time, and I’m still working on making myself visible. I practice when you’re asleep. I can tell you know I’m around, you’ve learned to read the signs. The way the hairs on your neck rise when I talk to you, the shiver that runs down your spine when I stroke your hair or caress your face. You still speak to me every day. You just don’t talk to the ring anymore, you talk into the room. I only use my voice to sing to you quietly when memories of the war overwhelm you at night. It’s the only thing that soothes you enough to sleep. 

Finally I have practiced enough to become fully realised. It has taken months. I wait for you to finish up your shower, luckily our bond is large enough to allow you some privacy at least. You were towelling your hair, when you walked out of the en suite and I was sitting on your bed. My ghostly form lessens the damage done to my body, but from how crestfallen you look I imagine it’s still not great.

“Granger…” it’s all you can say before your throat closes up. You walk stiffly, and sit down next to me, your eyes roving over my face. 

“I probably only have tonight Malfoy, it takes a lot of energy to be here,” I try to be soft-spoken so I don’t startle you. My voice seems to come from everywhere, I want time and getting my voice to come from me takes too much. 

“You’re always here though, I feel you all the time,” you reply, your voice strangled, carrying so much hurt. 

“I know,” I tell you, my hand reaches up to stroke your cheek. You try to lean into it, but pass right through, the icy shock making you gasp and jerk back up.

Your eyes glitter with anger, “Why haven’t you said anything until now, Granger? Were you just torturing me? Trying to make me think I was crazy?”

“No, I am not trying to torture you,” I reply coolly, lowering my arm, my eyes flashing. How inconsiderate thinking a few goose pimples equate to actually being tortured to death. 

“Then why? Why are you still here, Granger? Why wouldn’t you talk to me or let me see you? Did it mean nothing to you? Even back then you had a vindictive streak, didn’t you? You probably love this, watching me die a little more every day,” your eyes blaze in anger. “I hate you, Granger.”

This always happens, we devolve into fighting and then make up with heat and passion. I refuse to engage, time is too short.

“I had to practice a long time to do this, Malfoy. I would try all night while you slept,” my voice is level, but my heart is beating so hard. I ache to touch you, but of course it would just make you cold.

“Why wouldn’t you ask me for help?” you are still trying to bait me.

“And what would you have done? If I expend too much energy I disappear somewhere and I have no idea how long it takes to come back. You would have spent countless hours talking to nothing.”

You hate that I’m right, I can see it in the set of your jaw.

You begin angrily pacing around your room, I can see how this is tearing you apart. Your breathing is rapid, your eyes wild. Your hands clutching at your heart and your stomach simultaneously. There is a sick, twisted smile on your face. You love this don’t you? I think you believe that feeling so bad, the guilt roiling inside you means you’re a better person now. That your grief for me is what is driving that. I know that’s not true, it’s why you need to set me free.

I walk over to you, stilling you with barely-there pressure down your arms. “You know what you have to do.” I hold your gaze, your grey eyes boring into mine. My touch comes to rest on your hand, the one with the ring, I dip into the stone and its cools drastically on your skin.

“I asked you to please destroy it,” my voice is barely a whisper but it echoes all around us. “You couldn’t help yourself, though.” My breath hitches, your stunned silence all I get in return.

“Malfoy, you have to get rid of this,” I look pointedly at the ring. “You- you have to get rid of me.”

“But-” you look stricken. “I don’t want to, I don’t think I can handle living without you, even the small amount of you I have.” 

I pull away and go to sit on the bed again. “Then I tell you now, you won’t have that anymore, no more singing when you’re having a panic attack, no more touches, no more wisps of air caressing you as I answer your questions. You won’t feel me at all, but you will know that you are keeping me prisoner, denying me peace.” I give you my most determined look, the one you know so well, the one you know you cannot win against.

I sit and stare straight ahead, I dim myself to about half strength as if fading. 

“Wait!” you cry out, “Just let me think about this.” For a moment you are quiet, just pacing trying to think. Then you try bargaining, trying to convince me why it is best to stay. I am immovable, silent, slowly fading further. Next comes anger, you curse me out, calling me everything you can think of including throwing a book which sails through me, screaming yourself hoarse. Nothing, I don’t move. Next you try begging and this is the hardest for me to ignore. You crouch before me looking so sad that I want to make it all better, but I know this is the only way.

It takes an hour for you to cycle through everything you’ve got. My form is barely visible and you just stop. 

“Okay, I’ll do it,” your voice is strained from yelling at me.

I brighten back up, you watch, seeing me come into being again. 

“I have one condition though,” you say.

“You always do,” I reply.

“You have to stay with me tonight, for as long as you can. One night where we are together like we were. Please,” that last word is wrenched from you, your distraught face crumpled.

“OK.” I reach out my hand and you gingerly touch my fingers with yours. Enough to feel the cool tingle slip between us.

We talk like we always did, you smile like you do when no one else is watching. I ask you about the charity, about people we both know, about your life and you query what being a ghost is like. Though we talk for hours, soon we are just staring at each other, wishing we could make contact. It was like this any time we met up, we couldn’t help ourselves. Company is good, company with orgasms is far better.

“I need something light,” I tell you. You tilt your head slightly, curious. “Like a feather, a small one.” I continue.

You conjure a small white feather that lies flat in your palm.

“That will do. We may need a few more, like maybe 20 or so? More is better.”

“What is it you are planning, Granger?” you ask, a coy quirk to your mouth as you conjure more.

“OK, lay down,” I tell you, luckily you are only wearing pyjama bottoms from your shower.

You lie down, staring at me, still not too sure what I want. 

“Scatter the feathers on yourself,” I ask, keeping my eyes focused on you.

“I don’t- what are we doing Granger?” you question, swallowing a little nervously. Maybe you think I’m going to sacrifice you or something.

I lean beside your ear and dim my form, focusing my voice instead. “Don’t worry I think you’ll like it,” I breathe the words past the peach fuzz of your earlobes and brush my fingers over the raised hairs of your arm, a delectable tingle shuddering through you. 

You open your mouth in surprise, “I thought we couldn’t because, you know,” you gesture at my ghostly form. 

“We can’t,” I reply, sadly. “I can’t even touch myself, so you will have to do most of the work yourself, but I’ll still be here and can help in little ways.”

Understanding my meaning, you remove your pyjama bottoms. I sigh as you take your pale flesh in hand wishing I had the ability to touch you. You whirl the feathers over yourself with your wand. 

“Start slowly,” I instruct and you do, agonisingly slowly. Your cock getting thicker as you stroke yourself. I lower myself by your side and gently blow on the feathers, causing little eddies across your skin. You gasp in surprise, your member twitching in your hand. 

I manipulate the feathers across where I know you are sensitive. First moving on up your body to curl in the divot of your collarbone, your skin prickling along its journey. Another caressing down your arm, making sure to brush along the inside of your elbow. A gulping breath eliciting from you and you quicken your movements. I send little flurries of feathers to flutter over your length, some coming to rest and stir slightly with you along your pelvic bone. I run a hand over the very ends of the hair between your legs, causing you to buck and moan.

“This is amazing, Granger,” you pant out. “You must have practiced.”

“Shh,” I reply. 

You are moving fast now and I know it won’t be long. I blow scatterings of feathers up and down your body, hovering my hands to stroke your upraised hairs along your body, not enough to actually touch you, but light enough to send jolts through your body. 

Collecting enough feathers further up your abdomen, I give a final blow that cascades feathers down your body, cresting across your cock as you pump yourself furiously. You gasp a little choking breath and you release, white spurts caught upon the tight muscles of your stomach.

“No one will believe I had sex with a ghost,” you say, your smug smile looks over my form as we turn into each other, waving your wand to clean up.

I just smile, I can feel myself fading now, I expended too much energy.

You see myself ending our connection and that satisfied smirk recedes into panic.

“No, Granger, no, you can’t, not now,” you say, desperately.

“I have to,” I reply, cupping your cheek. “”Remember your promise.”

“I know, but I refuse now,” your eyes are hard and your jaw set.

“No, Malfoy, don’t ruin this,” I plead. “Respect my wishes just once, please.”

“But we can be together, kind of,” you say. Always thinking of yourself, aren’t you.

“I meant what I said before, after today you won’t feel me ever again.” My hard look beats yours every time.

Eyes downcast, you take off the ring and fling it onto the carpet. You hold your wand out to it in threat, your face set in anger against me.

“Let’s not end it like this, please Malfoy,” I say. My own heart blackening at the implied threat. I know in that moment what you mean to say and it’s not the best way to send me to the beyond, but it’ll do, I suppose.

“I _hate_ you, Granger.”

The blast from your wand sending me beyond what I can perceive.

* * *

I am surprised to come to consciousness. I don’t know how long it’s been again. You look the same, but you are drunk, despairingly so. You balance precariously on the tower eaves of your manor. I feel scared for you.

I’m invisible right now, but I’m here. I refuse that despondency I had last time, I come right up to you to try grab you but can’t get you to safety. The ring is no longer on your finger and I have no idea what is keeping me.

You take a swig of the bottle in your hand. You look out beyond the gardens of your manor, “It would have all been yours if only I’d had the courage.” You take another swig. I tell you how stupid you are, that you should let me go. I try to inspect every place you could keep a piece of stone. Trying to find how I’m still here.

“It’s your Deathday, Granger,” you announce to the expanse below you. “You died this afternoon, in my fucking ballroom.”

A whole year, huh? It seems so much longer from this side. 

“I did so much research, you know,” you say, wobbling. “You would have been permanently visible on the anniversary of your death, did you know that?”

I didn’t, who had been around to tell me? 

“See, you didn’t want to be here, that’s why it took you so long to have a form. And if I had waited just a week I could have had you forever, but now… now I have destroyed you three times.”

I only count twice, but I guess you count the time you turned your back on me in school as you chose your family‘s way of life. I always knew that would happen though. That didn’t destroy me, not like it should have. 

You still love how I affect you, for good or ill. I don’t think you’re OK. I think you might accidentally fall or do something other stupid thing in your state.

I try to gather myself as much as I can. I pass through the floor getting as far as the bond will let me, starting to panic. 

An ancestral Malfoy sneers at me from a portrait on the wall.

“Get Narcissa! North-east tower! Draco’s in trouble!” I yell as loud as I can to it. They begrudgingly move out of their frame and I float back to where you are. There is a sickening crack as you fall, hitting your head on the stone.

The blood exiting from your head made me feel sick as the tower door bursts open and your mother rushes at you. She grabs you up, cradling you. You are grey, unresponsive. 

You’re invisible form is beside me as your mother pleads with you to wake up.

“Granger, you’re trying to save me,” you say. 

“Of course,” I reply with a shrug.

“On your Deathday, you can come back if someone who loves you wills you back,” you say, staring blankly at your dying form. “So long as you haven’t crossed over.”

It all clicks into place, I was in the ballroom at first, then the mausoleum, then I followed you everywhere and now I’m here. It wasn’t the flagstone, it was you, it was your heart placing me where it expected to find me. 

I burst into tears, and you hold me. This will be the last time, I know it.

“You’re still needed, Malfoy,” I say. “Make this world better, but do it for you, not for me.”

“Everything good thing I’ve ever done has been for you, Granger,” you reply, and you take my hand. I can feel you now you’re in between worlds. You aren’t beyond yet like I am.

I squeeze your hand and smile. I’m so exceedingly proud of you. I don’t think what you say is entirely true, not anymore. I think you like being noble.

“Go back, Malfoy,” I start to let go, but you pull me against you. Our lips meet and my tears mingle with yours sinking down our cheeks.

“Please just say it once,” you ask as we pull apart, foreheads resting together.

“I love you, Draco.” It is breathy and endearing. I can see how it pulls on you like I’m breaking your heart for the very first time.

“And I... I-” you stutter. You can’t get it out, even now. I can’t help but smile at you.

“You hate me,” I end for you. I echo the amount of care and devotion into the phrase that I had injected into my own confession. You nod desperately pulling your lips against mine again. 

Then you are being dragged back into your body from the spells your mother is casting. I see you flutter your eyes, looking where I stand invisibly. Narcissa cradles you close to her, sobbing as dawn crests over the horizon.

That pull finally comes, the one I have been waiting for. As the sun touches my skin, I feel it calling me into the infinite sparks of the cosmos. You are finally letting me go and as I float up away from you a tear of joy drops from me onto your cheek like a spot of rain. You slowly blink.

And I’m gone.


End file.
